The Puzzle of Sovereign Debt Collateral: Big Data and the First Age of Financial Globalization

Marc Flandreau, Stefano Pietrosanti and Carlotta E. Schuster

No 17286, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: During the hypothecation “mania†of 1849-1875, many sovereign borrowers relied on the posting of collateral such as, famously, Peruvian guano. But in fact, such “securities†could not be repossessed. To explain the puzzling phenomenon of sovereign hypothecation, which has a long history before and after the episode we consider, we emphasise an informational channel: Posting collateral produced information on opaque borrowers by displaying borrowers’ resources and behaviour. Drawing on a novel dataset and a careful exploration of the universe of individual hypothecations in London contracts, as well as of their context and of the institutional framework they created, we establish the pledges’ role in documenting sovereigns’ wealth, commitment to repay and management of revenue streams. Encasing disclosure in contracts written by lawyers while incentivising the truthfulness of data process through penalties explains investors’ readiness to pay a premium, an early case of “Big Data†supported lending.

Keywords: Collateral; Information; Sovereign debt; Property rights; Financial innovation; Legal engineering; State capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G24 H63 K12 K33 N20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
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